Some days ago, on a Friday evening when I was driving home from work, once again, 250 km like every week, listening to the radio, feeling tired and far away in my mind, suddenly a song was played that got my attention, because I hadn’t heard it for some time… so I thought I’d do a little post here with a few songs I’ve always liked but are rarely transmitted on radio or other means.
Not all are what you would call a classic, in fact one ist quite recent. But they all share one thing: although they managed to be successful to some extent, they never got into those mysterious “standard-playlists” that appear to be almost the same everywhere and nobody really knows why, although everybody suspects the same. You know what I mean.
It’s not that these were “underground” or whatever, they just had something “too much unique” (so there would be people actually disliking them, which generally is a good sign, because people SHOULD have different tastes, something that seems to have gotten into decline over the last decades, but let’s not talk about that now) or didn’t have enough commercial feel (would really love to find out one day how those “program people” up there in radios and magazines, online-review-sites and record companies editing “best-of-some-year-genre-or-what-have-you-compilations” get to the conclusion that a certain song is an all-time classic or should be classified as “one-time-hit” and therefore remain in the disc-archive starting to accumulate a thick layer of dust…
Nostalgic Listening Suggestion no. 1:
Bran Van 3000 – Drinking in LA
(maybe it’s the band name that wasn’t convincing? But then again, how on earth could someone calling herself “Lady Gaga” be successful? Doesn’t “gaga” mean something like “crazy”, useless yadda-yadda, or even, according to TheFreeDictionary, somebody who isn’t in possession of his complete mental capacities anymore?)
Nostalgic Track no. 2:
Youssou N’Dour ft. Neneh Cherry – 7 Seconds
(let’s see… this song was number one in many countries’ charts and was played on “Live8”, but in these days on most radio stations I happen to listen to, it plays maybe once a year? Maybe here the “problem” is the song being to “polemic”, talking about racism?)
Not-really-nostalgic-at-all Listening Suggestion no. 3:
Hercules And Love Affair – Blind
(you’re going to say: “hey! Wait! This song is from 2008!” and I have to admit you’re right. But wait, the point I’m trying to make is this: their song disappeared pretty quickly from radio play, at least in this country and until that last friday I had never heard it again, despite it being a great track (at least in my humble opinion). They just published their second album, but I somehow don’t think they will be chosen for those “infamous” playlists. They are just too “different”, not mainstream enough. Read this interview and you know what I’m talking about.)
So, to finish this post (going too long already lol): maybe it’s all in my head. But what I see around me, everywhere, regarding music business, is a total degradation of the relation between quality, originality, artistic value or musicality and the level of success that’s reached. In most cases, they get more success with totally pointless videos containing almost pornographic scenarios than with music. Real music.
But then maybe that’s not new and it has always been like this, only changing style, outfits and (stupid) names?